Oklahoma Football: Sooners’ Season at a Tipping Point
By Chip Rouse
With two losses in the first three games, the 2016 Oklahoma football season is on the edge and dangerously close to cascading into a full-scale disaster.
What started out as a season filled with great expectations has quickly taken an about face, leaving everyone in Sooner Nation dumbfounded and desperate for answers.
On Saturday night, in Bob Stoops’ postgame press conference following perhaps the most devastating home loss in his 18 seasons at Oklahoma, you could visibly see the frustration of the Sooners’ head coach and easily feel it in his voice and the words he used to describe what he had just painfully witnessed:
"“All of us together (coaches and players) weren’t near good enough (vs. Ohio State),” the Sooner head coach said, “and we’ve got a lot of work to do to have any chance to win the Big 12.”"
After what we thought was a stunning loss to Houston to open the season, high hopes for what many thought would be a return trip to the College Football Playoff this season took a severe hit.
While the chances of a Playoff spot had been greatly diminished, the door wasn’t totally closed for the Sooners, especially with a chance to redeem themselves with a victory at home over an even higher-ranked Ohio State team that also was prominent in the College Playoff conversation.
If it wasn’t before Saturday, the door to the College Football Playoff is now slammed shut and dead-bolted as far as Oklahoma is concerned after Ohio State completely dismantled the Sooners, 45-24, on primetime TV Saturday night. It was as if this OU team that just a few weeks ago everyone around college football was so high on didn’t belong on the same field with coach Urban Meyer’s Buckeyes.
And all of this was in front of a record crowd at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Hope seemed so far gone midway through the third quarter, that from the severely limited crowd noise, you might have sworn that the only fans left in the stadium were for Ohio State.
What once seemed like a slam dunk that Oklahoma would win its 10th Big 12 championship under Bob Stoops now appears to be no more than a 50-50 chance, and that’s probably stretching the odds.
The Sooners must now regroup and get ready for as difficult a three-game gauntlet to open Big 12 play as the schedule maker could put together. Fortunately, they have an open week ahead to get healed, get things sorted out, get their heads on straight and get ready to go after the rest of the season.
First up is a trip to TCU, one of the most difficult places to play in the Big 12 and against an opponent that a number of people thought in the offseason would give Oklahoma a run for its money in the 2016 conference race.
The Horned Frogs lost loads of talent from last year’s squad, including starting quarterback Trevone Boykin and one of the Big 12’s best receivers in Josh Doctson. But don’t be fooled by that. Gary Patterson’s team’s always play fundamentally sound and strong defense, and TCU has shown through its opening three games – two wins and a loss – that, even with a largely new cast of characters, the offense is still explosive and as capable of getting to the end zone as any team in the Big 12.
If going to TCU doesn’t put a scare into you, how about the annual Red River Showdown against archrival Texas in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, where even the best laid plans can go awry. The Longhorns handed a much superior Sooner team its only regular-season loss a year ago, and this Texas bunch is much scarier, better prepared than last season and loaded with top talent.
After the annual trip to the Texas State Fairgrounds, the Sooners return home for the first time since hosting Ohio State for an Oct. 15 date with coach Bill Snyder and the Kansas State Wildcats.
Even though K-State may not have as strong a team as they’ve had in the past under Snyder, all you need to know is that the Cats have won the last to times they have come to Norman. To put that into perspective, Oklahoma has only lost nine games at home in the past 18 seasons, and two of those have been to Kansas State.
It is true that OU’s next three opponents are not on the same level as Houston or Ohio State, but they are good enough that the Sooners could conceivably lose to all three, especially with only the K-State game being at home.
In reality, though, Oklahoma cannot afford to lose any of the next three games to have the best shot at an outright conference crown. And the Sooners might only be favored in two of the next three.
If Stoops and the Sooners can find a way to get the train back on the track and remedy a good number of the on-the-field issues that have made them a shell of the team they were expected to be this season – a big “if” at this point – Oklahoma is still very capable of locking down a 10-win season.
After the next three games, the way the Sooners’ schedule sets up they would have arguably have the easiest second half of the season, with Baylor, Kansas and Oklahoma State at home and Texas Tech, Iowa State and West Virginia on the road.
We’ve written this before about the 2016 season of Oklahoma football, the first six games will go far in determining what kind of season the Sooners will have. They’re just 1-2 after the first three games, which is why the next three are so important.
“We’re going to work to keep a positive attitude…make improvement…and give ourselves a chance for the next Big 12 game,” said Stoops. “The Big 12 is now just starting.”
That next chance is at TCU – in two weeks – and if the Sooners don’t get better and quick, it would be near insane to expect a different outcome.